Freed
by skyward.eyes
Summary: "Now we finally have a chance, don't we, Clarice? We are basically obsessed with each other."


**Freed**

_Hannibal, fanfiction_

**Summary: **

"Now we finally have a chance, don't we, Clarice? We are basically obsessed with each other."

**Setting: **A small hotel in Malá Strana, Prague, two years after Clarice Starling's encounter with Dr. Lecter in _Hannibal_. Julianne Moore as Starling.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the characters.

* * *

**Freed**

"_Do you love me, Clarice?" _

"_Not in a thousand years."_

I smoked my tenth cigarette of the night. The sky was a deep, mute shade of indigo, somehow it made me wanted to smoke more. The scene would've been better if everything was muted, somber like the roofs several levels below my hotel room but in reality there was no silence. A mixture of sounds in the distance prevented me from sleep; jazz on guitar and violin that reminded me of Django Reinhardt days, people chattering away, cars, but the closest was the sound of piano from downstairs. The daughter of the owner liked to train very late at night, when most guests were asleep. She would've gotten more protests if it wasn't for her impressive Liszt. I myself enjoyed her music that I decided to extend my stay until next week, somehow I even started feeling a bit protective of people who said sour things about her.

When I said "not in a thousand years"- it was almost mechanical. When I thought of his question, of his eyes, my body felt light. As it became lighter and lighter I saw his eyes and felt his kiss. The sensation had since long locked inside a secret box inside me.

* * *

One day, about three in the morning, the piano produced a very different sound than the usual way it was being played. There wasn't Liszt, there was Bach. The music carried with it a certain weight.

I put out my cigarette, closed the window, took the room key, locked the room, then shoved the key into my jeans pocket before going downstairs. The music became clearer and clearer, each section came to me, each dynamic… then I remembered that it was the same that I had heard in Dr. Lecter's dining room some two years ago.

"I don't know your daughter plays Bach," I said to the owner at the reception table.

He took off his glasses, put his book face-down on the table, rubbed his eyes then answered me:

"That is not my daughter who's playing," he said. "The man has just arrived earlier this evening. I said my daughter would be furious if someone else touches it, but he has that…" he paused to rub his eyes again , leaned towards me, then continued in low voice: "He has that haunting air about him, you know, he could've killed me if I don't allow him so I let him. But you see… at least he plays beautifully. We don't have a chance to hear something like that very often—"

He already opened his mouth, ready to continue but I interjected:

"Thank you. I will now see him at the room."

"You know him?"

"Probably."

* * *

I stood at the door. The music continued, changing from a part to another, evoking many sentiments, many stories. I would've felt guilty if I just interrupted the man who was playing but I pushed the door anyway. He, on the other hand, was completely unaware of my presence. He and the piano; alone, inseparable.

I ended up listening to the thirty-two parts of Goldberg Variations. With the music he translated his insanity, his sentiments, he uncovered his veils, played his joy. The world where he lived in is a world where music flows like blood, where charm takes over ideology and justification of crimes.

"Well, Clarice, what a surprise," he said when he finished.

I said nothing in reply. He continued without even looking:

"You've been listening to me a long time, I see," he said. "How about if you listen some more? I'll play you a favorite prelude and fugue of mine."

It was a darkish, melancholy piece. It came alive in his hands, as if a part of him was continuously pouring out to the keyboard and ten fingers when he played.

"How about if you dance with me now, Clarice? In imagination, I mean, inside this waltz."

He launched into a Chopin waltz.

"I always know that you love me, Clarice," he said at the end of the song. "That is why we always seem to see each other. We're bound together by some kind of force. As Chopin put it: 'There is a force in Nature.' "

* * *

_Maybe he is a normal human being after all._

Now that I was standing in front of him in this dim room, wrapped in cold air and complete silence and the scent of his expensive cigar, I had no idea of what kind of person I was looking at: the criminal, the poet, the pianist, the doctor, the mentally sick… As two _normal_ people, who would he be? Who would I be?

"There's always a certain tension when we meet," he said again, placing a hand on top of the piano. I had no idea that someone could actually make an act such as placing a hand on top of a piano look very refined. I never had that much chance to notice him except for a side of him, anyway, maybe that day I was finally given a chance. "Don't be so uneasy around me."

"I'm not uneasy."

"Or that you feel obliged to arrest me?" he asked with a smile then took another leisurely smoke.

"I quitted," I said. "I'm here for vacation."

He could've been a normal human being after all. He could've been normal or right seen from another angle. _Everything lies in paradigm, and our eyes can only see as far as the angle we choose allow us to,_ my superior once told me that in our first mission together.

"Well, _you_ quitted, out of all people," he said. "Come sit next to me, I'll play another song, a familiar one. I'm sure you know this well."

When he played it he was most human. For the first time I realized that he had a childhood, that he was once a little boy living in his own little-boy world. It was after this song that he finally closed the piano lid.

"Now we finally have a chance, don't we, Clarice?" He smiled at me. His gaze was intense and deep, like the bottom of the sea. "We are basically obsessed with each other, but your obsession is always wrapped in layers of motives, you were afraid to admit it to yourself. Even back then in your _missions_, you were basically running after me, tracking my every movement, expecting to see me again."

Even now I still felt the drive to hunt him down, to track his every movement, to hear unexpected things from dead men's cell phones, to receive love letters written over rare papers using rare inks.

Then I finally said it:

"When I said 'not in a thousand years', I had no idea if I actually meant it."

* * *

He took me to his room on the topmost floor. From the widely opened windows I could see the streets spread out before me, the lights, the cars. The city came alive with the color of sky at dawn. It had turned slightly lighter around the horizon when he laid me down on his bed smelling of cigar and raw blood.

"How many have you killed today?" I asked.

He caressed my eyes, jaws, nose, lips with his fingers. He wiped strands of hair off my face. His fingers were beautiful, perfect. At times he'd follow the caress with soft kisses. I tilted my chin up so that he could kiss my neck. I stared blankly at the bleak ceiling.

If he were a normal human being, then these kisses and caresses would've made complete sense.

"Four," he said. "But none of their brains tastes remarkable."

I closed my eyes. His fingers went under my sweater then slowly moved up to remove it. My nipples felt the roughness of his fingertips as he did so. I lifted my arms so that he could remove it. Then he bent down to kiss my breasts. Each kiss was made lingering, long. The trails he left were cold. He traced the curve of my waist, hips. He slid down my pants then my panties using delicate, efficient movements. And with the same fingers he had sliced people's brains.

He caressed my body as if I was some kind of doll. Thoroughly. I closed my eyes. _What is normal?_ I thought all the time he was caressing me. With those things he had done and liked to do and at this time where I gave myself to him, which one of us was normal?

"Why do you kill?"

"It is so much like breathing," he said amid kisses on my body. He was now kissing my stomach. Each kiss was so delicate as if his lips had turned into an eleventh finger. "Do you ask normal people why they breathe, Clarice? Maybe you want an easier explanation—" his lips were now very close to my sex. To my surprise I spread my legs wide apart the time he slid himself off the bed then kneeled by the edge of the bed. His face was now in line with my sex. "Like music or art, it gives me instant, fleeting pleasure after a phase has passed."

With his is body half on bed and half off it, he tasted my sex. His breath was warm against the soft flesh, touching the deepest parts of me. Each lick he gave made me wetter. He buried his face between my legs, continued licking my sex. He must've felt the same thing when he eats those filleted brains. Just when I was in the brink of exploding, he stopped licking, climbed back onto the bed, over my body, then kissed my lips. I looked at his body, still fully clothed, his calm face as if nothing had happened. He didn't even have an erection. Was I good enough?

Then something inside me snapped. All of a sudden I got up, pushed him into the bed instead then took off his clothes violently, almost tearing them. He smiled. It was then that I noticed the first sign of desire inside his eyes. I unbuckled his belt and slid down his pants violently. After a short while I started kissing his face all over, my fingers caressing his bare flesh. He smiled, said:

"You are now freed, Clarice."

I continued touching him, who was still calm on the bed, I used my fingers to arouse his penis. When it finally hardened I inserted it into me, moving my hips to get the pleasure. I had no idea how long I was doing that. No sound reached me, everything in this stage reached me like a muted scene from a movie.

We came together: it was the first thing we ever had in rhyme.

I collapsed on top of him. He wrapped his arms around me. I wept. I had no idea who I was anymore.

The sky had turned a shade lighter, but the air remained cold. What kept me warm was his flesh. After a while I sat up then leaned my back against the head of the bed. He followed.

"You are freed," he said as if to remind me.

He took a half-smoked cigar from a large glass ashtray on the bedside table, lit it with a match, took his first smoke then passed it to me. I smoked it for some time then passed it back to him. When the cigar got completely smoked, he took another on the bedside table, cut the edge, lit it, then passed it for me to smoke. I smoked it for some time then passed it back to him. The process continued repeating itself mechanically it could've carried on for ever.

* * *

**Soundtrack:**

[I modeled Dr. Lecter's Bach after Glenn Gould and his Chopin after Adam Harasiewicz.]

Bach: Goldberg Variations, 1. Aria (the one that led Clarice to the piano room)

Bach: Prelude and fugue VI in D minor BMV 851 from _The Well-tempered Clavier_

Chopin: Waltz in C-sharp minor, op. 64 no. 2

Schumann: Träumerei (no. 7 from _Kinderszenen_ op. 15)


End file.
